Thursday, June 10, 2010

For those of you not paying attention: Last evening, the Chicago Blackhawks, an ice hockey team, won the final game of the National Hockey League championship, defeating the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 in overtime, and claiming the Stanly Cup for the first time in 49 years.

49 years ago, the Blackhawks defeated the Detroit Red Wings for the 1961 championship. In the series leading to that championship two of the greatest athletes in Chicago sports history, Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita made their first Stanley Cup appearances. Hull scored two in the first game including the winner, and Mikita scored the winner in game five.

Robert Marvin "Bobby" Hull was the brother of Barbara Hull. Barbara Hull was married to Richard Hallock. The circle is complete!

So now I ask you, what have the Stanly Cup and WWII cryptography to do with each other?

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

[1/17/10. As you can see the excerpt of the Human Adventure has been removed because the Oriental Institute asserted it's copyright. You win some you lose some as the saying goes. Maybe it'll appear somewhere else, perhaps even in an authorized form? Watch this space! And yes, in October 2010 the full film appeared in YouTube]

This is the Iran section of the Oriental Institute produced film The Human Adventure, filmed in 1933 and released in 1935. Most of the footage posted here is of the excavations at Persepolis.

Thursday, June 03, 2010

Washington — The fate of clay tablets that recorded details of everyday government transactions in the Persian Empire 2,500 years ago might depend on maneuverings in the government of the modern United States.

The tablets — more than 10,000 of them from a long-buried Persian government archive at Persepolis — are at the center of a lobbying effort in the U.S. Congress. They were discovered in 1933 and have been in the United States since 1936, on loan from Iran for study. Scholars, research institutions and Iranian-American groups are trying to protect them from being seized and auctioned off for the benefit of people who have legal claims against the current Iranian government over acts of terrorism...